What Lenovo driver or utility controls Ultrabay safe removal? [ Edited ]

[kishy]

Apologies if this has been answered, but I've searched and haven't found the answer.

I did a clean Windows 7 install and aside from a minor headache I'm working on, I noticed that I do not have the ability to 'safely remove' and thus remove the drive in the Ultrabay, whether it is a HDD or DVDRW. Which Lenovo driver or utility package introduces this functionality again?

I specifically avoided reinstalling certain Lenovo tools because I was aiming for a rather slim install, so it's most likely a matter of the function simply not being installed rather than not working.

TIA and cheers

Edit: figured it out...

Opened Power Manager and found that it was basically just running as an icon to tell me how long my battery life is, without actually controlling anything. Clicked on a power plan and suddenly the Safely Remove icon popped up and I can eject the Ultrabay. Weird, but now I know.

...and again.

Just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared again without an apparent cause. Ideas?

[ThorsHammer]

You can customize that behavior.

The "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" icon and task is in the notification area of the bottom right portion of the taskbar.  If you click the little up arrow to expose hidden icons, it's there.  If you want it always visible, click Customize for those items then change the behavior.

[kishy]

Thank you, but I definitely looked there. It isn't actually being displayed.

If I plug in a flash drive, the icon appears, and the Ultrabay drive is not available in the list of items to be removed...

I found a pattern: if a disk is in and being accessed, the icon appears and I can see the drive in the list. A short time after the drive is no longer in use, the icon disappears and if I make it appear using an additional device, the drive is not listed.

[Chatbox]

Did you set the ultrabay drive to use some power saving mode to self power off/disconnect?

What happen if you put in a disc?

[kishy]

It works when I put in disks, and then appears in the tray again.

I have been unable to locate the help-documented power settings in Power Manager.

But - if I click on it and tell it to safely remove, it ejects the disk tray.

[Chatbox]

So basically, the drive power off when you don't have a disc in,  And that means you can pull it out at any time as it's not connected...therefore don't need the icon.

What if you change your power plan to Max Performance?

[kishy]

No difference.

On the factory image (and the previous W520, as this was the replacement for the aforementioned QC issues), when the drive was powered off, the icon in Explorer would change to indicate that, and when pressing the button on the drive, a message would appear (Power Manager is turning on your blah blah blah). I do not get this message, and the icon remains the default Windows optical drive icon.

It remains in Explorer even if I remove the drive from the computer; I have to go in to Device Manager and scan for HW changes to get it to realize the drive is absent.

There must be a driver or utility missing that I need to install, but I don't know what it is, and I am not installing everything until I find it...

[kishy]

Aha!

SATA controller driver. I had the newest one from the Intel site. Replaced it with this one from Lenovo and it seems to be working correctly now (ejecting the drive, not the tray, and showing up more consistently).

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS014898

Was almost ready to break out the Windows DVD and start over...glad I didn't.

[AdvancedUser]

Thank you, bruvuh!  Been looking for this for a few weeks.